


Liminality

by EssayOfThoughts



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Espionage, Gen, Second War with Voldemort, Spy!Percy Weasley
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:34:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26176519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts
Summary: He almost wants to leave, to recoil to the safety of his job, of keeping his head down and staying out of this - but he can’t. He’s a Gryffindor. He’s a Weasley. He’s been a blood traitor from the day he was born - from before, given his ancestors were said to have sullied other lines with their beliefs. He was raised with those beliefs. He couldn’t forgive himself if he did less.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 76
Collections: Alternate Universe Exchange 2020





	Liminality

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Elsin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elsin/gifts).



He cannot be obvious. He knows that. His brothers may think him stuffy and boring but he’s not stupid - he knows how the twins got away with their pranks, how Charlie wrangled his escape from school and off to Romania, how Ginny gets what she wants from Mum. 

They all have things they’re good at, things that are expected of them and they play into that at times if it will get them what they want.

Percy is stuffy, obsessed with paperwork and legalese and the fine details of the rules they work under. He’s obedient to authority, uses his own exactly in line with the rules. He keeps his head down and he stays out of trouble. He’s smart. He’s responsible. He’s not a troublemaker.

He can work with that. 

(The truth: he’s worked with that all his life.)

* * *

Andromeda Black - not Tonks, now, with her husband on the run to keep her safe, with her daughter in hiding with her werewolf husband and soon-to-be-born child - is a ferocious manager of the Obliviator archives and it’s that and that alone that seems to have kept her safe through all the upheaval. Her blood alone, born to the House of Black could not be enough: most everyone in the Ministry has seen Bellatrix Lestrange, wild and crazed, make claims of wanting to hex her own sister. 

But somehow, she’s woven her way through all the trouble and come out the other side as fierce and formidable as McGonagall herself.

Honestly, the idea of talking to her scares Percy more than a little. Andromeda Black isn’t like his mother in a full fury; there’s something colder to the bones of her, formidable as McGonagall, yes, but something more dangerously ruthless, something he suspects comes from growing up in a household of the Black Family, from making her way through school in Slytherin.

But he has to. As the Minister’s assistant he has free rein to go most anywhere, but she is, he thinks, possibly the only person who might know where to go and what to do who it’s safe for him to speak to. He cannot go to his father. He cannot go to any of Cresswell’s colleagues. The Auror department was gutted of any lingering Dumbledore loyalists months ago; most working in it now are merely glorified Snatchers with better paychecks.

There’s only so many people who’ll know what he needs to find out, and even fewer it’s safe for him to be seen speaking to.

“Ah,” Andromeda Black-Tonks says when he stops at her desk. “Weasley. I wondered when you were going to drop by. Shall we have a cup of tea?”

* * *

Andromeda Tonks, he learns, prefers a black tea brewed so dark and strong it might as well be coffee, no milk or sugar or honey to soften it. He stares down into the pitch of his cup until she slides a saucer of lemon slices to him.

“Apparently it’s a good combination,” she says with a shrug when he glances up at her. She’s holding her cup in both hands, cradled just before her face. “I wouldn’t know, I’ve not tried it.”

He drops a slice in, watches as its yellow half moon stains darker. 

“Drink up, Weasley,” she says. “It’s perfectly safe.”

Has to be. She poured from the same teapot and let him pick his cup. They both cast privacy charms before sitting down in this corner of the break room. 

“Usually,” he says, then pauses. Andromeda Tonks, when he looks up at her, is watching politely. “At home we always had it milky.”

He doesn’t expect the laugh Andromeda gives at that.

“Dora prefers it that way too,” she says.  _ “‘We’re not Blacks,’ _ she’d say.  _ ‘We don’t need to have tea how your mum insisted.’” _

Percy doesn’t know what to make of the fact that Andromeda Tonks has chosen to still have tea how her mother insisted. 

“You can’t talk to your family,” she says more softly, setting her teacup down. “Do you need a message passed on?”

There’s a lot of things he wishes he could say to his family. Apologies for one, every secret he’s heard over these past months for two. But he makes himself shake his head. From his pocket he pulls a small slip of parchment.

“I work in the Minister’s office,” he says. “Almost everything important passes through there.”

If Andromeda Tonks has bought her way back into the family of her birth this is an unconscionable risk. But- there’s only him to pay it, now. He’s estranged his family. He has no dependents. The only person who’ll end up beaten and tortured and locked in a cell will be him. With a tap of his wand he dispels the charm disguising the parchment.

He does not miss how her eyes widen. 

* * *

Tea is drunk. Biscuits eaten. They talk niceties mostly, small talk about work, about how things are under the new regime (wonderful, of course. It wouldn’t do to complain). 

“You need to get out more,” Andromeda Tonks says when he prepares to head back up to his desk. “The Hog’s Head has some lovely lilies in it’s flowerbeds right now. Whiter than snow.” She pinches his cheek just as Aunt Muriel used to. “You look so peaky. Get some fresh air, lad.”

* * *

He doesn’t go immediately. He can’t. He doesn’t know if he should.

He doesn’t know: if he can trust Andromeda, if it’s safe to go. He doesn’t know: what the consequences are, who his contact would be. 

He doesn’t know: if the information he has will ever be helpful.

(He does know: he’s scared.)

He gathers more. Forms have to be filled out in triplicate; it’s hardly an oddity for him to duplicate a few forms for archival purposes. And he’s a good worker, precise. He knows protocols so well he’s often asked to mind trainees and make sure they know what to do. No one will question what he does, even if Yaxley drops by periodically to make it obvious he’s keeping an eye on the one loyal Weasley. 

Every now and again he has tea with Andromeda. He shows her more slips of parchment, notes of what he’s catalogued and saved. Patrol times at Azkaban, at pureblood manors where prisoners are kept. The timeslots when prisoners are being moved from Ministry holding cells to either of those. Plans for raids, suspected employees. He doesn’t know what she does with the scattered fragments of information he shows her. Listening to the wireless provides no new knowledge - but then, would it? It’s not as though Voldemort is about to admit if his forces were attacked, if suspects escape before they can be caught.

It would undermine him.

Every time, Andromeda pinches his cheek. “Get some fresh air,” she says. “Go and see the flowers in Hogsmeade. Hog’s Head does a good pie on Sundays, go and treat yourself.”

So eventually, he does.

* * *

He’s got a lot accumulated. Most of a briefcase’s worth, really, and it takes some creative spellwork to shrink it all down to fit an internally-enlarged envelope and to find the right place in the  _ Prophet _ to stick it so it doesn’t show in the paper’s folds. 

And he apparates up to Hogsmeade.

Merlin’s pants he forgot how cold it could get this time of year. London’s been too kind to him. (Hasn’t been kind at all, his mother would say.)

Andromeda was right, though. The flowers at the Hog’s Head are almost unnaturally white.

* * *

He doesn’t go there immediately. That would be too obvious, too risky. Instead he wanders through town. Curfew notices are up and there’s a rime of frost on some fenceposts; Percy doesn’t doubt dementors patrol at night to back up the dark robes of Snatchers and Death Eaters. 

Honeydukes is much the same as ever though, like Zonko’s a bright pop of cheerfulness in all the grey. He buys himself a thick slab of Honeydukes’ milk chocolate; a slab of Honeydukes’ dark for Andromeda. 

He wishes it were easier to pass the information on. He doesn’t know if Andromeda has done anything with what he’s told her but - but does it have to be this way, have to put himself and others in the open? 

At least in his case, he’s alienated so many people he’s the only one likely to get caught in spellfire. He doesn’t know if that’s the case for the wizard meant to be his contact. 

But he has to. He decided that when he first started gathering the information. He’s a Weasley. He’s a Gryffindor. He was named with a nickname for  _ Percival. _ Cowardice is not something he should seek. Safety is not safety when others are at risk.

So eventually, he trudges his way to the Hog’s Head.

* * *

Percy hates this part of the plan more than any other part - paperwork is innocuous enough, even taking it home is hardly suspicious for a workaholic such as himself.

But handing it over... if he’s caught, it’s death at best, Azkaban at worst. The Hog’s Head is the last place he expected to be told to go for such a handover, but Andromeda was insistent. The shady pub no Hogwarts student went to even if they wanted to seem cool. With ogres and hags and vampires as patrons, even those who tried to avoid prejudices still hardly felt welcome. As he takes a seat at the bar, casting the privacy charm he developed to keep Fred and George from bothering him, he can feel the eyes on him. 

He almost wants to leave, to recoil to the safety of his job, of keeping his head down and staying out of this - but he can’t. He’s a Gryffindor. He’s a Weasley. He’s been a blood traitor from the day he was born - from before, given his ancestors were said to have sullied other lines with their beliefs. He was raised with those beliefs. He couldn’t forgive himself if he did less.

“Andromeda said you’d know what to do with this,” he says lowly, sliding the forms and the newspaper they’re hidden in towards the barkeeper. “That you’re the safe point of connection here.”

The man doesn’t look up from the glass mug he’s cleaning, just lets a whistling breath out through his teeth. “Tryin’ t’give yourself a lily-white soul are you?” he asks. “Get some absolution before your job gets you killed?”

Lilies for the dead. For grief. For Lily Evans Potter, Harry’s mother. White as in Albus as in Dumbledore. The code, exactly as Andromeda had promised him, repeated in some form over so many days.

“Hard to keep things so when the world’s turned to ash,” he says quietly. He has to trust his little charm is keeping him safe; that this bar, home mostly to outsiders, is safe for this. “I don’t think anyone here is a phoenix.”

The barkeep snorts, lifts his hand to hang the mug from a peg. “No,” he agrees. “Last one hereabouts left us. It’s down to just us, now.”

His eyes are as pale and piercing a blue as Dumbledore’s ever were.

“Just us,” Percy agrees, mouth dry.

* * *

The barkeeper doesn’t take the papers. Instead a bottle of butterbeer and a plate of steak-and-kidney pie with green beans and potatoes is plonked down in front of him. 

“Eat up,” the man says, gruff and abrupt. “Read your paper. Pay. Leave it when you go.”

Hardly the most subtle way of handing over documents but- more subtle than other options, he knows. His mail is almost certainly being watched.

He eats. It’s nothing compared to Hogwarts fare, certainly nothing compared to his mother’s. It’s better than anything he’s been able to cook for himself though, a familiar old dish if a bit different in the seasoning than he’s used to. 

The bar is quiet. The other customers have long since turned back to whatever had their attention before; he’s not felt any eyes on him since the barkeep served him. The privacy charm hasn’t picked up any sense of prying. Percy picks at the label on the butterbeer bottle and wonders if this is the best course of action, if this is real or if it’s a trap.

But it doesn’t matter, does it? He’s on his own. He can’t go back to his family. He can’t get help except from other traitors who found some way to ingratiate themselves in the new system.

And that means he has to trust people neither side is about to trust. Just other people like him - those caught in a liminal space, slipping between cracks.

He finishes the last of his drink, sets down some galleons and leaves the newspaper on the bar.

He only hopes the information is enough.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to go a bit more in depth but ended up not having the time to do all I wanted; I hope you like this nonetheless! If you do like it, I have written for Percy Weasley during the war before; you can find my fic over here: [Weatherby](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11330919). Similarly, if you want more Aberforth, I wrote about him for [An' Ye Harm None](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8153360).
> 
> Most of this fic was written while listening to [_In Hell I'll Be In Good Company_ by The Dead South](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9FzVhw8_bY). It felt fitting. 
> 
> Comments are ever appreciated, or you can come and talk with me over one [tumblr](http://essayofthoughts.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
